I love Philos' puzzles. This German company always manages to manufacture nice puzzles at affordable prices, and each one offers a different challenge. They are mostly built from hardwood, which enhances their natural look and high quality. The company works with many international puzzle designers and with the Quadstair, this is no exception. Designed by Oskar van Deventer, one of the most prolific puzzle designers in the world, the Quadstair is a superb puzzle that few will be disappointed with.

Made from four identical pieces, each in a different wood color, this interlocking puzzle is quite an intriguing object when you first try to solve it. The pieces seem to be all glued together in a spiral with a square shape and a hole in the middle. Whichever way you pull on the pieces, they just won't budge a millimeter. However, there's a way to separate the four pieces. You just have to keep trying until you succeed. Be careful not to apply too much force, though. It's not needed for the solution, and even though the pieces are glued together at key spots, you might end up breaking the puzzle.

Usually, interlocking puzzles are quite a challenge for me. Even more when I try to reassemble them. Fortunately, even though it looks intimidating at first, the Quadstair is not that difficult. After spending about 10-15 minutes to separate the pieces, I'd say this is about 7/10 in difficulty. Reassembling it is actually easier, which is not common for an interlocking puzzle. I guess the fact that the pieces are all identical makes it easier to visualize it solved and connect the pieces in the right way. Once you know where to pull, the puzzle is very easy to disassemble and reassemble.

What I really liked about Oskar's Quadstair is that its simplicity and perfect harmony among the pieces makes for a surprising and rewarding feeling when you finally discover its secret. This is a great puzzle for any puzzle fun, since there aren't any special tricks involved, just clever designing and utter brilliance.

Closing Comments:

When you combine a good puzzle company and a genius puzzle designer like Oskar, the result will certainly be amazing. This is an affordable puzzle that any collection should have and any fan, beginner or expert, should try.

Availability: At the time of writing, the Quadstair is unavailable at PuzzleMaster. You can keep checking regularly or try the other great puzzles offered by Philos.

Links:

Oskar van Deventer's Official Website

Our Common Goal is yet another interesting puzzle from the German manufacturer Philos, designed by Logan Kleinwaks. I'm a sucker for pattern puzzles and this one captured my attention right away because of its high contrast of light and dark shades made by hevea and samena woods.

The puzzle features 16 identically shaped pieces, although there are seven different patterns of light/dark parts glued together. The goal of the puzzle was somewhat confusing to me at first. I thought the pieces had various ways to be put together in various patterns (7 to be exact), but it turns out that there's only one pattern you're supposed to do, which is the one that is already shown in the picture on the package, and it actually comes packaged in its solved state - shame really, because the explanation makes you think that there is 7 different patterns to build, but they're referring to the patterns on the pieces.

So, the goal is to remove the pieces from the tray, mix them, and then try to make the requested pattern. Don't be fooled by the fact that the puzzle comes in its solved state, because it will be quite challenging to return it to the original pattern. It is rated as a level 8/10, and I reckon it's pretty accurate, given the unusual shape of the pieces and how they must be packed in the tray. On top of that, you have to keep in mind which pieces to use at a certain time to make the original pattern.

The puzzle is more or less a 2-in-1 puzzle, as it's first and foremost a packing puzzle. Even though the pieces are identically shaped it's still challenging to pack them all in the tray. Try to do that by just packing the pieces and not minding the pattern. You'll see that it's not that easy. Now, try to pack them, this time carefully selecting the right pieces for each spot.

After solving the main - and only - challenge, I tried to make other patterns that made sense geometrically, but all I could come up with were random configurations. I still believe that with lots of patience and a careful analysis of the pieces it's possible to make other symmetrical - or at least less chaotic - patterns. If you put your mind to that, you might have a serious challenge in your hands. Are you up for that task?

Closing Comments:

Our Common Goal by Philos was a bit less than I was expecting, but still was quite a challenge. It is really well made, something already to be expected from the German manufacturer, and it could be used as a nice center piece to decorate a coffee table or a shelf.

Availability: You can get a copy of Our Common Goal at PuzzleMaster for $28.99 CAD. Check out other designs by Philos if you like their puzzles.

Philos, a German wooden puzzle manufacturer, makes pretty interesting packing puzzles. Most look very simple in design and concept, but they can still offer a great deal of challenge. One of these such puzzles is called the Tribar Puzzle, and it's deceptively harder than you'd think at first.

The puzzle is nicely built with quality materials, not plywood. There's a nice contrast between the dark-shaded frame and the lighter pieces. On the bottom of the frame you can see a black sheet of something velvety - it gives a nicer finish, even though it's on the bottom - probably also to give it some friction and prevent it from moving much against a flat and smooth surface.

The Tribar Puzzle consists only of four odd-shaped pieces. There are three identical pieces, but all of them are made by gluing equilateral triangles half off-center from one of their edges. The frame is perfectly triangular, also equilateral, and the goal is to pack all four pieces inside. There's only one way to do it, excluding rotations or mirror images. You can rotate or flip the pieces in any direction you want, though.

Rated as a level 2/4 by the manufacturer and 7/10 by PuzzleMaster, I'd say that the rating is mostly accurate. The puzzle is a little challenging, especially because of the Z-shaped pieces, but with only four pieces to move around there's only so much you can do with them. It took me about 10 minutes to find the solution, so I'd say with just a little patience it's perfectly possible for anyone to solve it eventually through some trial and error. The solution is not symmetric, but makes a neat shape (not chaotic).

Closing Comments:

The Tribar Puzzle is a simple but pleasant puzzle. It's not frustrating to solve, and packing puzzle fans will thoroughly enjoy it. Philos has a lot of puzzles like this, so you only need to choose the one that most appeals to you...or get them all.

Availability: The Tribar Puzzle is available from PuzzleMaster for just $10 CAD. To check other puzzles from the same manufacturer, click here.

Ich Bin Ein Bärliner - a mouthful - is a very interesting packing puzzle by Marcel Gillen that plays very well with the concept of Picture Frame Puzzles (one of my favorite types of puzzles). It is manufactured by the German company Philos, which specializes mostly in wooden puzzles.

If you're fluent in German you'll probably notice right away that there's something wrong with the name of the puzzle. It should read Berliner, not Bärliner, but actually, the name is a clever play on words with the design of the puzzle, featuring bear-shapes pieces (bär = bear). Comprised by 9 bears and a rectangular piece, the puzzle consists of two challenges, one easy and one hard. The first challenge requires you to place the 9 pieces flat in the frame; the second challenge is to add the extra piece, the rectangle to the already tight frame. Can you solve these two challenges?

At first sight, the puzzle looks like it's made of plastic, but a close inspection reveals that it's in fact painted wood, both frame and pieces. In my opinion, it's not the best choices in terms of presentation, especially the chosen colors, which look a bit pale and washed out. Other than that, though, the puzzle is nicely built and the pieces are well cut, despite not being laser-cut. The oval frame measures about 14cm x 12.5cm (5.5" x 4.9").

The first challenge is quite easy to solve, with the pieces being placed a little haphazard inside the frame. I believe there's multiple solutions for this one, since there's more space for the pieces to move around. The second challenge requires a little more finesse playing with the pieces in order to find the extra space to pack the rectangle. If you've played other Picture Frame Puzzles before, you'll certainly love this one.

The solution to the second challenge may be unique, excluding rotations or flipped pieces, and it's somewhat symmetrical, more elegant. The puzzle is rated by the manufacturer as a difficulty level 3/4, but considering how the pieces should be packed in challenge 2, I reckon it's a little harder than that, maybe a 3.5/4.

Closing Comments:

Ich Bin Ein Bärliner is a great packing puzzle and a welcome addition to my Picture Frame Puzzle family. The presentation could've been better with natural and contrasting wood colors, but it's still a worthy purchase.

Availability: Ich Bin Ein Bärliner is available at PuzzleMaster for just $13 CAD. You can also find other puzzles from Philos.

The Cross-Puzzle comes from the German manufacturer Philos, which has a large variety of wooden puzzles, chief among them a nice selection of interlocking ones, like the one above.

The puzzle consists of 9 pieces interlocked in groups of three. You need to take it apart and reassembling it to fully solve it. The design itself, more specifically the cross shape, has been used in several different interlocking puzzles before, but the actual concept of interlocking groups of three pieces is kind of clever and a novelty, at least for me.

The puzzle would be too simple if each of the three groups had the same orientation for its pieces. However, when you first try to take it apart you'll be surprised by how the pieces actually interact with each other. Each group has three pieces, like I mentioned above, and one of them has twice the thickness of the other two, so in fact it looks like each group carries four pieces instead of three. Another interesting feature is that one of the pieces slides out on the opposite side of the other two (as seen below).

The construction of the puzzle, unfortunately, is not as perfect as others in the Philos range. The wood is made from several layers glued together and seems low quality, apparent by the way the pieces connect, which not being perfect takes away some of the challenge, since you can clearly see the edges of each piece.

This is not a difficult puzzle by any means. Even if it were flawless it wouldn't have been too much challenging. It's classified as a level 1/4 in the package and 7/10 by PuzzleMaster, which I tend to agree. I didn't have much trouble to take it apart, even though it took me a bit more time reassembling it. Like most interlocking puzzles, spacial awareness skills are a must and the reassembly always requites a bit more focus and dexterity. Since I've noticed the way the pieces were connected as I was taking them apart, the reassembly was relatively easier.

Closing Comments:

The Cross-Puzzle is certainly a very interesting puzzle. The concept is fresh and original, but the construction could've been much better with proper wood. Nevertheless, it's worth a try if you fancy interlocking puzzles.

Availability: You can buy the Cross-Puzzle at PuzzleMaster for $14 CAD.

Links:

Philos Official Website

Hirokazu Iwasawa is a regular participant at the annual IPP since 2004 and is known for his superb designs, some of which have won awards, like last year's Puzzlers' Award winner, the Square in the Bag. The puzzle I'm  reviewing today is not from the IPP competition, but it's definitely worthy of the same recognition.

The 3M Puzzle, as the name suggests, consists of three M-shaped pieces that need to be packed inside the box. It sounds easy enough. It's just three pieces, right? - Well, these three pieces are all you need to test your patience, since the solution is very unusual.

The puzzle, which is produced by Philos, comes in a nice small wooden box, with measurements of 6.8 x 6.8 x 7.2cm (2.7" x 2.7" x 2.8"). Be careful though, because the puzzle is packaged in its solved state. My advice, if you want to avoid spoilers, is to ask someone to remove the pieces from the box for you, or turn the box upside down and scramble the pieces with your eyes closed. I understand they need to save packaging space, but these type of puzzles should be packaged in another way. Part of the fun with puzzles is to solve them on your own. There's no worse feeling than to unpack a puzzle and see the solution shoved right in front of your eyes. It's happened to me before.

When you have all three pieces out of the box the fun starts. How do you get them inside again? This is actually a very hard puzzle, and judging from PuzzleMaster's rating of 9/10 it's somewhat intimidating. The packaging also shows a level of difficulty, a little different from PuzzleMaster's, with a level of 3/4. Knowing what I was up against with, I proceeded with caution.

The pieces are all identical, so no need for a particular sequence. Each pieces has a small square glued on both sides, which is going to block many of your moves. I started by trying to pack just two of the pieces to see how they interacted and which positions were possible within the box's edges. After some experimentation, and only a few minutes, I ended up with an interesting arrangement. Now, all I had to figure out was how to add the third piece to the already complex arrangement. It wasn't that hard, actually, although it required some dexterity and good hand coordination.

The small squares are certainly a pain to deal with, and to place all three pieces you need to arrange them partially outside the box. I can describe the solving process as some sort of a Coordinate-Motion puzzle, where all pieces need to be assembled simultaneously in place. After solving it, I think the level 9 is maybe a bit too much. I consider it more an 8/10, although it's highly dependable on your skill with packing puzzles.

Solution: PuzzleMaster doesn't provide a solution for this puzzle, but if you need help solving it you can check out a photo of its solution here.

Closing Comments:

I really liked the design of the 3M Puzzle. It's simple and yet can be rather challenging. It's not a good puzzle for solving over and over again, because once you know the solution it's hard to forget about it, but since it's quite affordable it's a nice addition to any collection.

Availability: You can find the 3M Puzzle at PuzzleMaster for just $16 CAD.

The Cone, from the German manufacturer Philos, is a very nice wooden puzzle, designed by Andrew Snowie, which will show you that appearances can be deceiving. At first, it doesn't look like it's difficult at all, because the pieces all have distinct shapes, but as you start to disassemble it you'll soon discover that it may be harder than you were expecting it to be.

The concept behind  the Cone is quite original, but I guess they ran out of originality when it came to name the puzzle as simply Cone. They could have used some puns with the word cone, like Cone-demned - Probably a bit lame, but it's just a thought... As I was saying, the concept of the puzzle is fantastic, and that's what really matters.

The puzzle has a striking visual appearance, with some of the pieces in a contrasting color, although they're random colored and won't help you in the actual solution. They do make for a nice visual effect, though. I also like how the pieces are cut, as though they'd represent different cross sections in a cone.

The 13 pieces comprising the puzzle are a mixture of rounded shapes and three "special" ones (two tetrominoes and one pentomino). These special pieces are hidden underneath the round-shaped ones and once the puzzle is taken apart, they're the harder ones to assemble back. In order to make the special pieces fit inside the puzzle without having their corners showing on the outside, some of the corners were truncated to make the outside surface as smooth as possible.

This is a level 8/10 puzzle, according to PuzzleMaster's rating system, but even though the special pieces offer a more complex challenge, the puzzle can still be solved quite easily, mainly because of the nature of the rounded pieces, as they provide a clue as to where they must be placed. As mentioned above, the hardest part of assembling back the Cone puzzle is to place the special pieces, but even these ones offer another hint if you careful inspect them. The truncated corners on the special pieces pretty much tell you how they must be placed, which is to have these very corners point to the outside. Two of the round-shaped pieces have a triangular hole in the middle, and as such they fit right into the truncated corners. If you separate the pieces in groups, you should be able to solve it within 10 minutes or so. There's no downloadable solution, but I reckon you won't be needing it. Persistence and patience will eventually get you there...

Closing Comments:

The Cone puzzle is definitely a nice puzzle to play with. Philos makes some really nice puzzles and this one is no exception. Puzzler or not, I believe you'll enjoy this one, not only as a nice decorative object, but also as a fun challenge. Worth a try.

Availability: The Cone puzzle is available at PuzzleMaster for about $31 CAD.

Philos, a German puzzle manufacturer, has a very interesting series of original wooden sliding puzzles designed by the Japanese Hirokazu Iwasawa, the Jam Puzzles. I chose to review the easier of the four, the Triangular Jam Puzzle.

What I like about Philos' puzzles is that they're very high quality. The tray and the pieces are very well built and polished for a clean and smooth surface. This particular one is made from Beech wood, tray and the three lighter pieces, and the darker triangle is made from Cassia Siamea wood. The dimensions of the tray are about 15cm square (5.8"), so it's very easy to handle the pieces.

The goal of the puzzle is very simple: you have four triangles inside the tray, three light and one dark (the dark one is also thinner), and the object is to only slide the pieces in order to free the darker triangle, through an opening at the bottom edge of the tray - No piece is to be raised or resting on another one. You are given a standard starting position to solve, but you can try other arrangements as well.

As I said above, this is the easier of the four Jam Puzzles, rated as a level 7/10 by PuzzleMaster. There's one rated as a 8/10 and two as a 9/10. At first, when you start to move the triangles, they jam quite easily against each other (hence the name "Jam") and you'll struggle a bit to find a way through. Here, the quality of the puzzle really shows: because they are very well polished, their edges allow them to slide very easily, so most of the time, you just have to keep rotating them around the tray - in the case of the standard challenge, counter-clockwise - until you can slide your dark triangle through the slot.

When I say you have to rotate the triangles around, it's not as easy as it sounds. It has more to it than a simple move. The trick here is to always try and make room for the next triangle to slide over. Note that the tray is not large enough to have two triangles with their bases side-by-side. After a few minutes of fiddling around with the pieces, the dark triangle was finally free. When you solve this challenge, however, the fun doesn't have to be over. You can try other challenges as well with different starting positions. Below, you can see in the photos a couple of examples. I have tested them and they're all solvable.

Closing Comments:

The Jam Puzzle - Triangular was a really nice puzzle to play with. It's not particularly challenging, but still fun and enjoyable. Trying other challenges with different starting positions is a great way to keep playing with it. Now, after solving this one, I look forward to try the harder versions. Really worth a try.

Availability: You can get a copy of the Jam Puzzle - Triangular at PuzzleMaster for about $19 CAD. For your reference, you can also take a look at the Triangular Jams: the Hexangular; the Pentangular and the Rectangular.